Gannett to close Nashville design studio

We were told after the last layoffs a few months ago that our current staffing level is fully sustained by online revenue.

Anyone who believes that is too gullible to be in journalism. Especially considering our recent digital subscriptions have been propped up by one-year specials that are due to end and require people to re-up at full price.

 

Toward the end of last year, didn't most sites offer a one-year digital subscription for something ridiculous like $4.95 or $9.95?

So much for "the work we do has value."

 

The writing should have been on the wall when it was announced Gannett was selling the Tennessean building. Alarm bells should have been going off when they closed Asbury Park. Why relocate the whole design studio (which at this point has more employees than the Tennessean newsroom) to the newer, smaller offices somewhere when you can just eliminate it?

 

I didn't hear about that. Which papers and what days?

 

Hattiesburg, Alexandria and Opelousas.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...-papers-moving-to-3-day-a-week-print-editions. Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

One thing I find interesting is that Gannett is reducing capacity. It seemed that only Gatehouse and Gannett were buying papers. But if Gannent had a corporate strategy to continue making acquisitions I don't think they reduce the total capacity of their design hubs.

 

Opelousas was my very first job and at the time, it was one of the best papers in the state. For a community that size, the paper had the feel of a bigger newspaper. When I left (late 90s), the newsroom had five reporters, two photographers, one copy editor, one executive editor, one city editor, one sports editor and two sports writers. Last time I visited Opelousas, the newspaper was down to three employees in the building (photographer, news reporter and ad rep/secretary). The paper was only 8 pages and had one sports page with one local story and the rest was stuff they got from Lafayette.

I'm still in touch with a lot of people that I worked with in Opelousas and we shake our head in disbelief every time we talk about what that place was just a mere 20 years ago. I'd be completely shocked if that paper isn't either sold to a local business person or just eliminated in the next year. I think moving it to 3 days a week was the death knell.

 

I don't think the paper will be sold. I think papers in towns the size of Opelousas just get rolled up to a larger paper, in this case to Layafettte.

 

Now, I do recall news about the reduction of print editions in Hattiesburg, Alexandria and Lafayette...I had a friend who once worked a Florida weekly or semi-weekly that was part of several other weeklies that were relatively close geographically. In an attempt to be more big-time, each of the weeklies would produce a paper on a different day and would have the whole week covered, combined with online, to produce, in essence, a daily paper...If not a local wraparound a national USA Today, perhaps Gannett will take its Louisiana papers and do a reverse strategy - cut down the print product so that each paper comes out once or twice a week, all on different days, to produce a combined "daily" product...Not saying it's a good idea or that it would work, but just thinking out loud about what might be coming next.

 

I think the next stage of Gannett's consolidation is to start combining staffs. I read here that Gannett divided the Tennessee staffing with Memphis covering the Grizziles, Nashville the Titans and Knowxville the University of Tennesee. But each of the papers retained sports editors. If design is centralized anyway why have separate editors? Why not have one editor and a combined staff for the state?

 

Exactly. What's with all the lying going on from the suits???

 

Moving from Gannett to tronc. ... Word comes from two contacts in Deerfield Beach -- they've been out of downtown Fort Lauderdale for a few months -- that the Sun Sentinel's editor/publisher has told senior editors that if current trends continue, the paper's newsroom staff (which has shrunk from more than 300 to a little more than 100 since 2008) will be cut in half over the next three years. And so it goes...

 

I'm surprised USAT-Tennessee lost its Design Studio, given how everything has been assimilated there. It makes more sense if the building's been sold, because that's a ton of downtown space.

USAT-Tennessee has one overall sports editor, Dave Ammenheuser, based in Nashville. Memphis and Knoxville kept their sports editors, essentially to run the locally produced pro and college coverage and participate in statewide coordination. I believe the smaller papers' SEs are gone. It is, technically, one integrated staff -- print and online. Dana Sulonen, the former Opelika SE (see jobs board) is running digital for the whole thing.

There are four Gannett New Jersey papers under a single sports editor, the recently promoted ASE. (I think the former SE is now doing something non-sports digital.) The two south Jersey papers are have basically been merged. North Jersey Media Group is still its own entity, with its own SE and other editors, but the pages being done in Phoenix. (Asbury Park's Design Studio work went to Phoenix.) However, I think NJMG -- which has the Bergen Record, Herald News and a zillion weeklies -- and Asbury are fighting for control over Gannett New Jersey.